Viewers and readers should question polls, whether reported by CNN or Fox or MSNBC with the same vigor the old Chicago News Bureau once counseled, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out”.

Blessings upon New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for pointing out that “fulmination” is the right word to describe opposition to the diplomatic deal President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have just reached with Iran and the P5+1 major world powers.

The P5+1 offers a strong array of international powers. The term P5+1 refers to the UN Security Council’s five permanent members (the P5); namely China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; plus Germany.

The PPP poll finds that “there’s strong support nationally for the Iran deal, that voters want their members of Congress to let it move forward, and that there’s no potential political backlash for members who do support the deal”.

Israel has carried out a series of tests in its southern desert to measure the effects on its population and environment of a so-called “dirty” bomb attack combining conventional explosives and radioactive material.

The daily Haaretz, reporting Monday on the four-year experiment, said the research concluded that high-level radiation was measured at the center of the explosions, with a low level of radiation dispersal by particles carried by the wind.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Coupled with the major military call-up of Israel's reserve forces, I would not rule out a false-flag attack with a dirty bomb as a pretext for declaring war on ... someone. If they are planning to use radioactive material in the false-flag, then the target is most likely Iran.

But again, look for what should be there and isn't, and what isn't there is a motive for Iran to attack Israel at this time. Iran has negotiated a deal. They are not building a nuclear weapon and the sanctions are to be lifted. Iran has what they want, and no reason to wreck the progress made with any kind of attack. Iran has not launched a war of aggression against another country in over 200 years. Israel, on the other hand, cannot go six months without attacking one of their neighbors, and Netanyahu stated that if the Iran deal went through, we would attack Iran.

Does Beinart really believe the media complex that gives the War Party a guaranteed platform suffers from amnesia? I hardly think so.

Peter Beinart asks some pretty good questions: he wants to know why the same crowd that lied us into war in Iraq isn’t completely discredited when it comes to their opposition to the recently concluded deal with Iran. No, he doesn’t put it quite that way, in part because, by his own admission, he was one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for what he now describes as “one of the most important, and damaging, episodes in the history of U.S. foreign policy.” He frames his question this way:

“I have a fantasy. It’s that every politician and pundit who goes on TV to discuss the Iran deal is asked this question first: ‘Did you support the Iraq War, and how has that experience informed your position?’”

Beinart is right to regard this as a fantasy, because it will never happen. Yet he fails to ask why that is.

British government under Cameron's watch has been an active and willing partner in the Machiavellian strategy of divide and rule in the Middle East spearheaded by the US and Israel.

Obama picked up where Bush left off, flooding Syrian and Libyan insurgent groups with untold largesse and arms, using the corrupted Arab Gulf kingdoms as conduits for weapons transfers for the sake of plausible deniability.

ISIS themselves have mostly eschewed hostility towards Israel, posting an official statement on social media in July 2014 saying that they’re more interested in fighting “Muslim infidels” than the Zionist state.[6]

Israeli officials have expressed similar sentiments, with Israel’s former envoy to the US,Michael Oren, stating in a September 2013 interview that Tel Aviv “prefers” ISIS and al-Qaeda over the “bad guys backed by Iran,” namely Syria’s Assad and Hezbollah.

It is simply tit for tat and it is part of the window dressing routine that both sides have to engage in for a long while.

In the meantime, again we are being told by the Administration officials and the mass media that Iran continues to be the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism and is busy destabilizing the region by backing the Assad regime in Syria, the Shi’a militia in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.

An exchange between US Ambassador to the UN and her Iranian counterpart is another example of the post-nuclear-agreement Cold War between the United States and the Islamic Republic:

The Iranian administration, reading and hearing the foregoing rhetoric on a daily basis, is certainly not going to take all the allegations and insults without reacting in kind. Both sides must remain actively engaged in window dressing and face saving charade for some time.

Does she really think the American voters will overlook her criminal behavior and put her in the White House where she can pardon herself?

Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne, I read the transcripts of an interview Ms. Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Ms. Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.

What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.

Iranians are celebrating the prospects of a long awaited relief from the economic pain that the sanctions had imposed upon the nation. While they blame the United States government for what they believe to have been an unjustified and unfair treatment, they are divided as to what the true motivating factors could have been behind America’s animosity toward Iran.

The majority opinion points to America’s insatiable appetite for a hegemonic control over the region and its energy resources. A much smaller segment of the population comprising of the more educated elites, believe that Israel and its Zionist supporters in the United States have been at the helm and steering America’s foreign policy in the Middle East toward Israel’s preferences, even at the expense of America’s own strategic interests.

Iran has sought negotiations with the U.S. for two decades, but both Democratic and Republican administrations favored hostility demanded by Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Now that Iran nuclear deal is completed, the attention of Western news media and political commentators is predictably focused overwhelmingly on the opposition to the agreement within the U.S. Congress and from Israel and the Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition.

That media lens misses the real significance of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is that Iran succeeded in negotiating an agreement with the United States that upheld its national right to a nuclear program despite the obvious vast disparity in power between the two states. That power disparity between the global hegemon and a militarily weak but politically influential regional “middle power” has shaped not just the negotiating strategies of the two sides during the negotiations but, more importantly, how they came about in the first place.

I urge anyone who reads this to watch the video above called All Wars Are Bankers Wars that will reinforce my stance and opinion into a more digestible understanding of the how and why and greed and inhumanity, as there is far more going on here than I can put into this already over lengthy op-ed and I will now explain why and how we keep the wars going and in doing so make a small cartel of banksters richer… for here is the crux of it all and HERE is an example of exactly how I understand what happens…

An unmanned Israeli reconnaissance drone crashed in the waters near northern Lebanon's port of Tripoli Saturday, the Lebanese army and a security official said.

In a statement, the army said the drone crashed at 8.30 a.m. local time (0530 GMT) Saturday. It gave no other details but published photos that showed the aircraft largely intact in the waters and then on land after it was taken out.

It had a Jewish Star of David and Hebrew writing on it.

Webmaster's Commentary:

It should be pointed out that up near Tripoli there are no Hezbollah. So what is Israel spying on the Sunni Muslims for?

In a rare rebuke to his bullying, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to stop the United States and five other world powers from reaching an agreement to constrain but not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, Netanyahu still is dominating how the U.S. public and congressional debate is being framed, with Iran accused of regional “aggression” in four countries.

There is little truth and much exaggeration to Netanyahu’s depiction of what is going on in the Middle East. Yet, the U.S. mainstream media mindlessly reprises Netanyahu’s falsehoods...

Netanyahu’s reference to “Iran’s aggression,” which is now becoming a conventional-wisdom talking point in Official Washington, was curious since Iran has not invaded another country for centuries. In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – at the urging of Saudi Arabia – invaded Iran. But Iran has not invaded any of the four countries that Netanyahu cited.

There is a madness in how the mainstream U.S. media presents the world to the American people, a delusional perspective that arguably creates an existential threat to humanity’s survival. We have seen this pattern in the biased depiction of the Ukraine crisis and now in how Official Washington is framing the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement.

In this American land of make-believe, Iran is assailed as the chief instigator of instability in the Middle East. Yet, any sane and informed person would dispute that assessment, noting the far greater contributions made by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the United States.

The larger issue for the American people is what to do with this insane political-media system that dominates Official Washington. Either these powers-that-be are detached from reality or they are deceitful propagandists who think they can manipulate us with lies and distortions.

I have sometimes thought that if wars could be shown in slow-motion, we could put an end to this barbarism that gives the lie to all claims of “civilization” and “humanity.”

GAZA WRITES BACK is one of those very rare books that depicts war in slow motion.

The 23 stories here, written by 15 young authors (from late teens to early 30s, all but three female) were compiled to commemorate the 5-year anniversary of “Operation Cast Lead”—the name Israel gave to its 2008-2009 campaign to once more (but not finally) “mow the lawn” in Occupied Palestine—mostly, in this case, in Gaza.

It is a book that vivifies and personalizes the horrors, but also adumbrates the gnawing losses, the indelible memories.

Presidential candidate Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri expressed hope that the historic nuclear deal struck between Iran and six world powers could have a positive impact on Lebanon’s stalled presidential election.

Magdi Abdelhadi points to the housework that Muslims must do before the ideology of Islamism can be defeated, and Alan Hart argues that Western governments must cut off the policy oxygen on which Islamism flourishes.

On May 27, 2015, US ambassador to Lebanon, David Hale, a Crypto Jew, announced that US is in the process of a new mega embassy complex in Lebanon. This will be second relocation of American embassy since Israeli Mossad bombing of US embassy and US Marine barracks in April 1983.

Hale told reporters that US needs a much larger space to advance US-Lebanon common interests and the two countries growing and deepening ties.

Webmaster's Commentary:

In other words, the US is getting ready to overthrow Lebanon's government and is already building larger quarters to run the country from!

Seven soldiers and a number of protesters were wounded during a scuffle between the Lebanese Army and Free Patriotic Movement supporters near the Grand Serail in Downtown Beirut Thursday, the military said.Seven soldiers and a number of protesters were wounded during a scuffle between the Lebanese Army and Free Patriotic Movement supporters near the Grand Serail in Downtown Beirut Thursday, the military said.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This sounds like another Victoria Nuland "special", a covert coup to topple Lebanon's legitimate government and install a pro-US pro-Israel puppet.

Lebanon told a senior U.S. official that it would not make any concessions on the disputed maritime border zone with Israel believed to contain large quantities of natural gas, but expressed willingness to demarcate the area with the help of the U.N. and all concerned parties, sources and experts said Wednesday.

“The message to the Americans was very clear: Lebanon will not give up an inch of its rights in the 870-kilometer maritime zone which is close to Israeli territorial waters. But the government expressed willingness to demarcate the zone with the help of the U.N. and all concerned parties,” a source who attended the meetings between Lebanese officials and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Diplomacy Amos Hochstein told The Daily Star.

Webmaster's Commentary:

What is most revealing in this story is how Israel sends the US to make its territorial demands of Lebanon!

The real issue holding things up is whether the Americans have the "political will" to make that leap, to agree in writing to its obligations (without 100 caveats) and the courage to face their sprawling bureaucracy whose bread-and-butter is the 'sanctions industry' and the 'Iranian enemy.' says Sharmine Narwani

It’s D-Day in Vienna, and the parties sitting across the negotiating table still haven’t ironed out terms to settle a 12-year standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. Expect this deadline to be missed. And prepare for a lot of hot air to fill its space.

The “hot air” is calculated narrative-spin from a range of players that seek to 1) scuttle a deal, 2) increase pressure/create leverage at the negotiating table, or 3) frame an upcoming agreement in language favorable to one side.

Please forgive my cynicism and negative connotations in this letter but I find it is often necessary to infuse the negativity to emit action, anger and resolution.

Why do You allow the criminal, corporate media to continuously and incessantly lie to its citizens and not only misrepresent the facts but often fabricate stories in order to inflate the severity of the fiction?

All sort of things in these negotiations are going on behind the scenes, not only between the P5+1 and Iran but between the Western allies as well.

Additional demands on Iran at the nuclear talks put forward by France are basically impossible to fulfill; it’s unlikely that they were made without the full knowledge and approval of the US, says political commentator Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich.

Recently, Israeli TV aired an interview (Hebrew, at the 2:00 mark) with a wounded Syrian fighter who was treated in Israel after being evacuated from the combat zone. As I, and many other journalists have reported, Israel, despite the false claim of neutrality in the civil war, has frequently intervened in the conflict on behalf of forces opposed to Bashar al-Assad. It does this less because it opposes Assad himself, than because its arch-enemies, Iran and Hezbollah, are the regime’s strongest allies.

A $3 billion grant to the Lebanese Army for the purchase of French weaponry is still in place, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said Wednesday, days after Lebanese media reports suggested the deal had been frozen. “The Saudi-French agreement to provide the Lebanese Army with weapons is still in place,” Adel al-Jubeir said at a joint news conference with French counterpart Laurent Fabius. The deal was announced in December 2013 by late Saudi King Abdullah and former Lebanese President Michel Sleiman. The first shipment, comprising 48 MILAN anti-tank missiles, vehicles, helicopters and truck-mounted cannon, arrived in Beirut in April. Last week, a report in a local newspaper said that the grant had been suspended and that the MILAN anti-tank missiles were “outdated.” It also claimed that humidity had affected some of the rockets prior to delivery, rendering them inoperable. The Lebanese Army has responded by stating that the rockets are fully operational.

The United Nations “Special Tribunal for Lebanon” (STL) was ostensibly set up to find and bring to justice the killers of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was murdered a decade ago along with more than 20 others in a massive bomb explosion. But rather than fulfilling its mandate after squandering some $500 million tax dollars, the UN court is seeking to put journalist Karma Khayat (shown) in prison for seven years — not for killing the late Lebanese leader, but for her groundbreaking reporting on the case that exposed the court’s stunning incompetence. The Hague-based UN outfit is also demanding that Khayat’s media outlet, Beirut-based TV news station Al-Jadeed, hand over up to $7 million in “fines.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

It was the assassination of Hariri, blamed on Syria, that forced Syria to leave Lebanon, leaving it wide open for the subsequent attack by Israel.

The prove-a-negative trap is the Big Lie technique of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels: there is no substance to the allegations and there is no obligation to present evidence to verify, thanks to the dutiful and unquestioning nature of Western corporate “journalism”.

The United States and its Western allies are trying to ensnare Russia in an audacious disinformation trap over the Ukraine conflict. That trap involves imposing an insoluble conundrum on Vladimir Putin’s government, which we might call “prove a negative”. It is a familiar conceptual device that Washington has used elsewhere, against Iraq and Iran for example, in order to pursue what are otherwise illegitimate geopolitical aims.Russia is being held up as the guilty party that is undermining the shaky Minsk ceasefire; and Western economic sanctions are being extended “until Russia implements the ceasefire”.

It is time to stop fighting among ourselves, for JVP and others to stop their witch hunts against deeply committed writers and activists, for JVP to stop its attempted censorship and domination of the Palestine movement, and for all of us to get on with our desperately important work.

With the publication of my book last year, “Against our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the US was used to create Israel,” the attacks seemed to escalate.

It appeared that some JVP leaders were attempting to thwart my talks and prevent people from learning the facts that my book and my talks contain.

The West is finished, its culture dead. What is left is unattractive, even horrifying. There is no heart, no compassion, and no creativity.

It was the first time in many years that I had missed my column, my essays, for several weeks.

I was shocked by the state in which I found the United States.

I couldn’t breath. I lost the ability to write. I felt anger building inside me. The anger was suffocating, strangling me. It was unhealthy anger, mixed with frustration! It was not that sacred anger one feels when going to a battle against great evil. It was also somehow petty, indescribable, and pathetic. It was breaking me, humiliating me.

I hated the fights I had to fight here.

I tried to see the reality that was surrounding me with different eyes but wherever I looked I saw only a dysfunctional, sad, collapsing country and culture.

Obviously, the NATO alliance is on a dangerous, threatening roll toward Russia’s borders. American-led war games, thousands of troops and tanks, missiles, warplanes and warships have proliferated at dizzying speed over the past year, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Currently, NATO is conducting its biggest-ever war manoeuvres in the Baltic region, and yet when Russia takes reasonable defensive measures, Stoltenberg accuses Moscow of sabre-rattling. Just this week, prior to the Russian ICBM announcement, the Pentagon told the Paris Air Show that it was considering the stationing of its new generation of stealth F-22 and F-35 fighter jets in Europe – another contravention in a whole series of audacious contraventions of the 1997 Russia-NATO Founding Act which forbids such NATO military expansion.

I hope JVP will desist from its attacks on those it dislikes, and will instead focus on the often excellent work it is doing and that its members want.

I feel strongly that we all contribute important things to the movement for justice and peace in Palestine.It is time to stop fighting among ourselves, for JVP and others to stop their witch hunts against deeply committed writers and activists, for JVP to stop its attempted censorship and domination of the Palestine movement, and for all of us to get on with our desperately important work.

The “secret” Vegas weekend focused on planning for, and funding, a campaign to kill BDS in its academic cradle.

With U.S. billionaires both funding and setting up its top down strategy with Israeli-inspired organizations on American campuses, Israel’s successful invasion of U.S. institutions takes another major step toward “occupying” American institutions.

Four days after the Salon posting appeared, The New York Times buried two paragraphs about the Vegas event inside a longer story which featured the success Israel was enjoying in gaining anti-BDS support in state legislatures in South Carolina and Illinois.

This campaign against American supporters of Palestinian freedom, was prompted by the alarmed awareness among Israeli leaders, and their U.S. allies, that the BDS movement is rapidly gaining ground.

Iranian people have no problem with a rapprochement with the United States...…?Iran could prove to be a powerful strategic partner to the United States, as long as its independence and regional influence are not threatened.

While Mr. Obama had, realistically speaking, no better alternative in choosing the timing for his administration’s foreign policy reorientation, a meaningful follow-through to implement his vision after his term in office expires would need a new Chief Executive with similar convictions; and, as things appear now, that prospect seems somewhat in doubt.

The current jockeying by potential candidates for the 2016 presidential elections is a perfect example of how true national interests are sacrificed for the sake of personal gains.

Hezbollah and the Syrian army captured fresh territory from Nusra Front militants outside a northern Qalamoun town Wednesday, Al-Manar TV reported, as clashes continued for a second day with ISIS on Lebanon's northeastern border.

The Hezbollah-run channel said the allied forces took over the areas of Shaabat al-Tasme and Shaabat Wadi al-Ahmar on the southern outskirts of government-held Jarajeer, destroying three military vehicles and a bulldozer.

ISIS militants attacked four Hezbollah posts on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Ras Baalbek Tuesday in a failed bid to capture two hills, sparking intense clashes that killed a number of jihadis, Al-Manar reported.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Funny how the Islamic State attacks Israel's Islamic enemies ... but never Israel itself!!!!!! Weird. It's just ... weird! :)

“Compared to Syria, life in Lebanon is disgusting. Life is different in every way: with housing, schools, visas and work—especially work, since Palestinians are not permitted to work, and the majority relies on UNRWA’s meager assistance.

These days Lebanon, as with this region, is being shaken by political and ‘terrorism” crises, threats to stability, growing popular unrest, and ideological and theological sacrum bellum turbulence. Forces not seen since the beginning of the last century with the end of the Ottoman Empire and its replacement with the hegemonic Sykes-Picot diktat.

Yet, with all of Israel’s swelling international legitimacy problems, the Zionist regime still occupying another country, Palestine, can sound its bugle, which having no valves or other political pitch-altering complications, blast-summons its agents in Washington and elsewhere to get busy and circle the wagons.

Here set out in black and white in the Israeli media is a moral conundrum that western politicians, diplomats and international human rights organisations are resolutely failing to address – and one I have been highlighting since 2006.

Jeffrey St. Clair, one of the few remaining Western journalists with a moral conscience, describes the latest Israeli horror to which we are all accomplices.

The Israel Lobby tries to prevent reports and criticism of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians by branding every critic of every policy of the extreme right-wing Israeli government an “anti-semite.” In other words, if you object to Israeli armed forces shooting down Palestinian children in the streets and then bombing the funerals of the kids the Israelis have already murdered, you hate Jews and are an anti-Semite.

The success that the Israel Lobby has enjoyed in imposing this twisted logic on Congress, the White House, the media, the universities and the insouciant American public is astonishing. As a consequence, Americans are no longer answerable to Christian morality but to the evil that the Israel Lobby represents.

Hezbollah is ready to liberate the outskirts of the Lebanese border town of Arsal, the deputy head of the party's executive council said Saturday, accusing the March 14 coalition of supporting terrorism and inciting sectarian strife.

“The positions of the March 14 [coalition], which serve as a source of hope for takfiri gangs don’t concern us, neither does sectarian incitement which is worse than the terrorist occupation of the outskirts of Arsal,” Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said during a Hezbollah ceremony in south Lebanon.

Many observers have expressed concern that Israel could sabotage the Iran deal: fomenting a war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and soon, so that the Israel lobby flips out in the U.S. and Iran and the United States are suddenly at dagger points rather than at the table.

In spite of AIPAC, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Saudis and some of its GCC allies having done everything they could to kill the pending nuclear deal with Iran, they have failed. The negotiations are on track. Many opinion polls show that a comfortable majority of Americans support President Barack Obama's diplomacy with Iran.

It is time to cut these losses and bring some heavyweights into this battle against extremism.

Baghdad and Washington are pointing fingers, each accusing the other of being asleep on the job.

An objective look at US interests in the region paint an entirely different picture. The Americans seek to maintain absolute hegemony in the Mideast, even as they exit costly military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their primary interests are 1) access to low cost oil and gas, 2) propping up Israel, and more recently, 3) undermining Russian (and Chinese) influence in the region.

IS the world going mad? Military posturing is quietly reaching new extremes in Europe, the Mediterranean and the South China Sea. And the provocative bluster has just reached new heights.

The source was anonymous. But the mouthpiece has a measure of credibility. High profile military analyst and former US Naval War College lecturer John Schindler tweeted last week: “Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: ‘We’ll probably be at war this summer. If we’re lucky it won’t be nuclear.’ Let that sink in.”

Hezbollah is doomed to fail in Qalamoun and throughout Syria, the leader of the Nusra Front has said, predicting that the Lebanese group would be defeated after the "approaching" downfall of the Syrian government.

A Hezbollah missile annihilated a group of at least three Islamist militants in Syria's Qalamoun region along the border with Lebanon Wednesday after being spotted by a drone, Al-Manar reported.

“All members of a group of Nusra takfiri [militants] were killed in an ambush by the resistance" between the outskirts of the Lebanese towns of Arsal and Nahleh on the Syrian side of the border, the Hezbollah-run channel said.

Israel has preannounced its intent to inflict heavy civilian casualties the next time it bombs southern Lebanon, already claiming that Hezbollah will be at fault because its forces are enmeshed with the population, a remarkable public admission.

The truth must be told from the outset: I hope Israel is suspended from FIFA.

A soccer ban doesn’t kill anyone. A boycott spills no blood. It is a legitimate weapon to establish justice and apply international law. Israel supported and supports boycotts, and encourages them: against Hamas, against Gaza, and, of course, against Iran. It even joined the boycott against South Africa, albeit in spite of itself. Now its turn has come.

Decades of letting neocons dictate a hawkish foreign policy have put the American Republic in profound danger, just as presidents from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower predicted, warnings that Americans must finally take to heart...

We may lament our poverty of leadership, but there are ways to make it function. “Princes,” since long before Machiavelli have always used advisers; some even listened to them. Surely the capable people among us — like the “wise men” who whispered in the ears of those earlier leaders — can guide today’s leaders toward more viable policies and away from the chaos that engulfs us.

Far from admitting defeat, Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to sabotage the agreement between Washington and Teheran which is to be signed the 30th June 2015. In order to do so, he could restart the war in Syria. His idea is to continue the work already accomplished by the Islamic Emirate in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, by applying the Wright plan and creating an independent pseudo-Kurdistan straddling Iraq and Syria.

How hard is it for the Israeli military to launch an unprovoked war with its neighbor by casting itself as a victim of barbarianism, rallying international support and even apologizing in advance and exonerating itself for killing innocent civilians? It seems it only takes one phone call to the New York Times.

That’s right, the world’s most powerful newspaper has just published an article wholly inspired and almost entirely narrated by the unverifiable and belligerent claims of Israeli military sources. The article “Israel Says Hezbollah Positions Put Civilians at Risk” casts no serious journalistic or responsible doubt on these Israeli claims made by a military institution that has engaged in wars that have killed tens of thousands of civilians in the past.

The author, Isabel Kershner warns that Israel says “…many Lebanese civilians will probably be killed, and that it should not be considered Israel’s fault.”

Reflecting on Israel’s disastrous wars against Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, Uri Avery asks whether all Israelis can look forward to is more wars conducted by the same kind of idiotic politicians and generals.

The US House of Representatives has unanimously approved a bill to impose new sanctions against the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah.

The House passed the measure by 423-0 on Thursday, shortly after the legislature voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill allowing Congress to review, and possibly reject, an international nuclear agreement with Iran.

The House passed similar Hezbollah sanctions legislation last year, but the Senate did not approve it.

The Palestinian Nakba is a catastrophe for the Jewish colonists and their descendants: it transformed the once decent surviving victims of European antisemitism and the Holocaust into terrorists, killers, thieves, racists, and liars – into the mirror image of their persecutors. And the same perverted brush tainted the UN and Western governments as collaborators of the sickest and most sadistic society in the world.

“Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.”

This could be anyone of the countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission.

This is precisely the point: The Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assure the west is in continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.

Carter and Brandtland are two of The Elders, “independent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity”.

In her statement following the visit, Brundtland, who is currently the Deputy Chair of The Elders, said:

We came here to visit Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. "As you know, we were unable to go to Gaza...."

The two of them, a 90 year old former U.S. president, and his much younger colleague from Norway, have become a crusading international dynamic duo determined to end the immediate Gaza suffering that is both “unsustainable and intolerable”.

If one wonders how a desert-crawling line of Japanese open-back trucks gifted by the US filled with countless irregular fighters in plain view could ever have ever made it overnight to the point where Western military and political leaders are saying “the war against ISIL may be interminable”, one begins to see through the game. ISIL is a construction financed and trained by covert US and oil-king allies that ruins every place it enters, like Syria once the regime began to win the civil war. Al-Nusra/Al Qaeda was not enough. ISIL is a step up in the US-led control of the Middle East by terror, chaos and social devastation. “The Salvador option” was the first name for the post-war death squads in Iraq, but “Islamic State” stirs much more apocalyptic passions pro and con. Best of all, the ruling foreign war machines of the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and NATO are now far better justified to “fight the barbaric terrorists”. Saudi Arabia with US support is now even projecting the “terrorist” and sectarian “Shiite” labels on the popular uprising of the poor in Yemen against a corrupt US-Saudi puppet government. One object alone is achieved. Peoples and resources of the region can be predated without sovereign social defences or unity of collective life purpose, the ultimate target of every US-led aggression. As long as all evils can be blamed on an ever-shifting Enemy, there is no overcoming recognition.

The Saudi-Israeli alliance has gone on the offensive, ramping up a “regime change” war in Syria and, in effect, promoting a military victory for Al-Qaeda or its spinoff, the Islamic State. But the consequences of that victory could toll the final bell for the American Republic, writes Robert Parry.

If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets the same fate as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi or Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, much of Official Washington would rush out to some chic watering hole to celebrate – one more “bad guy” down, one more “regime change” notch on the belt. But the day after Damascus falls could mark the beginning of the end for the American Republic.

In trod the repetitive violation by combat aircraft and drones of the Zionist regime, of Lebanese air space, two warships of this regime violated on Wednesday Lebanese maritime space, will we learned Site information Nachra-year.

On the evening of Wednesday, two warships of the Zionist enemy violated Lebanese for 7 minutes maritime area off the coast of the city of Ras al-Naqoura.

The spy drones of the Zionist regime violated Tuesday Lebanon airspace over Beirut and the north of the country.

Israel’s widespread practice of recruiting Jewish citizens and officials of other countries to serve as vehicles of Israeli policies has the potential to foment a new and possibly violent backlash, once the greater population has been made aware of such treasonous activities.

Law enforcement officers Tuesday fanned out across Beirut’s southern suburbs, stopping motorists to check identity cards and vehicle registrations on the first day of a long-anticipated security crackdown in the area.

In one incident in Msharafieh, a passenger van was stopped and police demanded to see the identity cards of all the travelers. At least one passenger was detained for lacking identification.

I am convinced that a new Declaration of Independence will be good both for the United States and for Israel.

As a prologue to the injuries suffered by the United States, I cannot put it any better than did America’s Founders:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation:”

According to the report, the airstrikes targeted the bases of the 155th and 65th strategic missile brigades, stationed in Qalamoun, near the Syria-Lebanon border. Residents of nearby cities Yabroud and Qarah reported hearing explosions.

Former Syrian opposition leader Hadi al-Bahra tweeted that there were reports of attacks on the 92nd battalion, in addition to the attacks on the 155th and 65th brigades. Al-Bahra also tweeted that the 155th brigade is responsible for launching Scud and Scud-B missiles.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, and that appears to be precisely what the Senate had in mind.

Evidently Obama has concluded that a veto-proof majority in both Houses stood behind the Foreign Relations Committee bill, and reluctantly conceded. But that wrests control of the process out of the hands of the Administration. The Iran deal may have died this afternoon.

To make sense of the events that have led to the current negotiations over Iran’s so-called nuclear ambitions, certain elemental realities should be highlighted:

Lebanon Monday received its first shipment of French weapons financed by a $3 billion Saudi arms grant announced nearly a year and a half ago.

In a ceremony marking the arrival of the long-anticipated and badly needed weapons, Defense Minister Samir Moqbel expressed confidence in the Army's ability to protect the country from extremists.

“Lebanon's victory against terrorism is a victory for all countries threatened by this terrorism,” Moqbel said in a joint news conference at the Beirut airport air base with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian.

An official of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has blasted Saudi Arabia’s bid to silence the group’s vocal opposition to its Yemeni aggression, saying Saudi money could not buy Hezbollah’s silence.

Western media did their best to hide Putin’s stratospheric popularity in their assigned propaganda task of demonizing Russia and Putin over the Ukrainian Western coup , replacing the Iran nuclear weapons threat hoax with the new Russian Bear threat one.

The biggest threat to our national security comes from treasonous cliques within our own ranks and their recent marriage over that last decade into the international corporate crime syndicates.

We are not really biased here at VT. It is just a simple observation to us… it is Putin and Lavrov all the way. No one can touch them and they own this piece of history, something that the spinmeisters cannot lay a glove on.

Western media campaign to demonize Putin has failed to convince its target audience. The Western public are not buying the hysterical political agenda.
The iconic current affairs TIME magazine follows this week’s news that Russian President Vladimir Putin came top of the TIME 100 readers’ poll.

Western publics have now alternative media sources, ranging from foreign-based professional news services to a plethora of Western-based internet sites. The alternative scope is often critical of Western government policies and capable of ably exposing ulterior, hidden political agenda. In other words, the alternative news sources are often doing the proper job of journalism that is neglected by Western mainstream media who seem to be preoccupied with advancing the political objectives of their governments – no matter how unethical those objectives are.

Moscow lifting a ban on selling Iran S-300 missiles will directly contribute to terror in the Middle East, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon stated Tuesday - as Iran passes on the weapons to its agents in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

Any lawyers willing to do it? Support the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) movement, on American university campuses across the nation.

It is high time to engage the enemy with weaponry with which they are not only familiar, but weaponry which can penetrate their defenses and do damage. ‘Know thy Enemy’, learn from his successes.

Ahmad Saadaldin on Panel 3 (Overcoming obstacles: SJP – Student for Justice in Palestine successes) stood out as an especially inspiring representative of … a younger generation of activists.

The US administration and the US Congress have succumbed to the demands of the Zionists and the Zionist regime. American politicians and media have fallen captive to the Zionist network. This is a lethal ailment that afflicts the US.

“Operation Decisive Storm” – yet another Pentagon-style illegal war – has already plunged Yemen into the twin plagues of civil war and humanitarian disaster.

So what we have is the ‘Empire of Chaos’ ‘leading from behind’ in the war on Yemen and also de facto ‘leading from behind’ in the fight against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh; the ones doing the heavy lifting are Iraqi militias supported by Tehran. The hidden agenda is always – what else –chaos; be it across “Syraq” or inside Yemen. With an extra bonus; while Washington is engaged on striking a nuclear deal with Tehran, it also turbo-charges an alliance against Tehran using the House of Saud.